Permissible Progeny?

The Morality of Procreation and Parenting

Edited by Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon

The book gives special attention to questions concerning the morality of procreation, which have tended to be neglected.

The collection brings together some of the biggest names working in these areas, many of whom are advancing completely new arguments.

Considers additional topics such as the morality of adoption, the rationality of having children, and the environmental implications of procreation

Offers a chapter that considers the duty to procreate in certain circumstances

Permissible Progeny?

The Morality of Procreation and Parenting

Edited by Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon

Description

This volume contributes to the growing literature on the morality of procreation and parenting. About half of the chapters take up questions about the morality of bringing children into existence. They discuss the following questions: Is it wrong to create human life? Is there a connection between the problem of evil and the morality of procreation? Could there be a duty to procreate? How do the environmental harms imposed by procreation affect its moral status? Given these costs, is the value of establishing genetic ties ever significant enough to render procreation morally permissible? And how should government respond to peoples' motives for procreating?

The other half of the volume considers moral and political questions about adoption and parenting. One chapter considers whether the choice to become a parent can be rational. The two following chapters take up the regulation of adoption, focusing on whether the special burdens placed on adoptive parents, as compared to biological parents, can be morally justified. The book concludes by considering how we should conceive of adequacy standards in parenting and what resources we owe to children.

This collection builds on existing literature by advancing new arguments and novel perspectives on existing debates. It also raises new issues deserving of our attention. As a whole it is sure to generate further philosophical debate on pressing and rich questions surrounding the bearing and rearing of children.

Chapter 10 Parental Competency and the Right to Parent (Colin MacLeod)

Chapter 11 How Much Do We Owe to Children? (Matthew Clayton)

Permissible Progeny?

The Morality of Procreation and Parenting

Edited by Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon

Author Information

Sarah Hannan is Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba.

Samantha Brennan is Professor of Philosophy at Western University and co-editor of Philosophy and Death (Broadview, 2009) and The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought (Broadview, three volumes, 2008-2012).

Richard Vernon is Distinguished University Professor at Western University and author of Cosmopolitan Regard (Cambridge, 2010) and Historical Redress (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Contributors:

David Benatar is Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford, 2006) and of The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

Andrew Botterell is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, where he is jointly appointed to the Dept. of Philosophy and the Faculty of Law. In addition to his work on the ethics of reproduction, he also teaches and researches in philosophy of law and metaphysics. He is a former Supreme Court of Canada clerk, and currently serves as the Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence.Elizabeth Brake is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University. She was educated at The Universities of Oxford (B.A.) and St. Andrews (M. Litt., PhD) and previously taught at the University of Calgary, Canada. Her work is primarily in feminist ethics and political philosophy. Her book, Minimizing Marriage (Oxford University Press, 2012), won an Honorable Mention for the 2014 APA Book Prize. She has also written on parental rights and obligations, liberal theory, and is currently working on a project on disaster ethics. She has held a Murphy Institute Fellowship at Tulane and a Canadian SSHRC Grant.

Samantha Brennan is a philosopher who works in the area of moral and political philosophy, with a special interest in feminist ethics. Although a philosopher by education and training, Samantha is cross-appointed to the Department of Woman's Studies and Feminist Research. She is also eligible to supervise doctoral dissertations in Political Science. Her work falls into three main areas: contemporary moral theory, feminist ethics and political philosophy, and theory of justice for families and children. Brennan served as Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Western University, 2002-2007, 2008-2011.

Matthew Clayton is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing (Oxford University Press, 2006) and has co-edited The Ideal of Equality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000) and Social Justice (Blackwell, 2004).

Jurgen De Wispelaere is an occupational therapist turned political philosopher. He currently works at the MCGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, following a stint as a postdoctoral fellow with the Montreal Health Equity Research Consortium (MHERC), McGill University. Before that he taught at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His publications span a wide variety of topics in ethics and politics, including unconditional basic income, disability, organ procurement, and family-making policy. With Daniel Weinstock he has written several papers on the state's role in procreation and parenting, especially focused on adoption. He is a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, coeditor of three edited collections and a forthcoming Handbook on Childhood (with Gideon Calder and Anca Gheaus).

Anca Gheaus is a researcher at the Umea University where she works on a project on 'Close Personal Relationships, Children and the Family' and De Velling Willis Fellow in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield. She has published articles on children and the family in journals such as the Journal for Political Philosophy, the Journal for Social Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Ethical Perspectives, Ethics and Social Welfare, Raison Publique and Hypatia. She authored book chapters on these topics in several recent collections and co-edits a special issue of the Journal for Applied Philosophy on the nature and value of childhood.Sarah Hannan is an Assistant Professor in Political Studies and an Executive Committee Member of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. She earned her D.Phil. from Oxford University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center for Ethics In Society. Sarah works primarily in contemporary moral and political philosophy. She is currently focusing on the morality of procreation and parenting. Some of her other research interests include: autonomy, bioethics, and philosophy of education.

Meena Krishnamurthy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and an Associate Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. Before this, she was a Research Post-Doctoral Fellow at Novel Tech Ethics, Dalhousie University. She completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at Cornell University. She works mainly in political philosophy. Her current research focuses on the notions of exploitation, coercion, and oppression. She has published papers in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, and Public Health Ethics.

Steven Lecce teaches political theory in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba, where he is also Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts. His research is primarily concerned with contemporary theories of social and distributive justice, and the ethical bases of the liberal-democratic state. He is the author of Against Perfectionism: Defending Liberal Neutrality (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), and numerous articles about political philosophy. Recently, he was a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University's Centre for the Study of Social Justice.

Corey MacIver is a D.Phil. student in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on environmental theory, he is writing a dissertation on which methodologies green political philosophers should adopt in light of real-world environmental politics.

Colin Macleod is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on issues in contemporary moral, political and legal theory with a special focus on the distributive justice and equality; children, families and justice; and democratic ethics. He is the author of Liberalism, Justice, and Markets (OUP 1998), co-editor with David Archard of The Moral and Political Status of Children (OUP 2002) and co-editor with Alexander Bagattini of The Nature of Children's Well-Being: Theory and Practice (Springer 2014).

Erik Magnusson is a D.Phil student in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on contemporary moral and political theory and its application to procreation and parenthood. He is currently working on a dissertation project examining the ethics of selective reproduction.

Jason Marsh is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He works on theoretical ethics, applied ethics, and the philosophy of religion and has published in such journals as the Monist, Bioethics, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. One of his long-term goals is to provide a systematic justification of procreation and to think harder about human happiness and our obligations to future generations.

Carolyn McLeod is Professor of Philosophy and an affiliate member of Women's Studies and Feminist Research at Western University, Canada. Her main research areas are reproductive ethics, moral psychology, and feminist philosophy. McLeod is co-editor (with Françoise Baylis) of Family-Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges (Oxford University Press, 2014) and author of Self-Trust and Reproductive Autonomy (MIT Press, 2002). In addition to her academic research, she has contributed to public policy about reproductive health care and adoption services in Canada.

Richard Vernon is Distinguished University Professor in the Political Science Department at Western University (Canada), where he teaches political philosophy. His publications are in the history of political thought and contemporary political theory, on topics including toleration, global justice, and historical redress.

Daniel Weinstock teaches in the Faculty of Law at McGill University, where he is also the Director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy. His research interests have to do with the interface between normative moral and political philosophy, and issues of public policy. Over the years, he has written numerous scholarly articles on issues like multiculturalism and religious diversity, public policy issues that relate to childhood, families, and education, and the governance of cities. A regular participant in public policy debates in Quebec and Canada, he presently sits on a provincial commission tasked with making recommendations on increasing justice and equity in the Quebec school system.